Reuniting for the first time since their collaboration on Black Sabbath’s 1983 Born Again album, Deep Purple´s Ian Gillan and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi took everybody by surprise in 2011 when they released the charity singles,’Out Of My Mind’ and ‘Holy Water.’

For the recording of these songs, the two rock legends called a few friends, asking for some “help.” Jason Newsted (Metallica), the late Jon Lord (Deep Purple, 1941-2012), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden), and Linde Lindström (HIM) completed the supergroup WhoCares.

Now, ‘Out Of My Mind’ and ‘Holy Water’ will be featured in a special 2 disc set of rarities and recordings culled from the careers of Iommi and Gillan. The WhoCares double CD will be released in North American on August 28th through Eagle Rock Entertainment.

Amongst the tracks are the two original WhoCares songs, Deep Purple’s unreleased studio jam Dick Pimple, a song from Repo Depo (a band Ian Gillan formed before the Deep Purple reunion) which never released an official song before this CD. Also included is ‘Zero The Hero,’ from the aforementioned Black Sabbath Born Again release (which is the only album to feature Gillan on lead vocals), as well as two unreleased songs from Tony Iommi featuring Glenn Hughes.

The Out Of My Mind and Holy Water singles were a joyful and inspired moment from two musicians with nothing to prove, willing to support music where music is considered a luxury. The spark to bring Iommi and Gillan in a studio together again was to finance the rebuilding of a music school in Armenia they had visited together on various occasions in past years.

“As I said once in the song Razzle Dazzle, it’s a real fine line between an orgy of destruction and a wonderful time,’” states Gillan. “The destruction of conformity in this case: some of these pieces never really fitted into their contemporary program and got sidelined or forgotten, and some of the album tracks never had much exposure. As the track listing for this album came together, I noticed many of the titles had character similarities: a combination of freshness as they finally felt the sun on their backs and rebellion in a ‘yeah told you so’ kind of way. And that adds up to a wonderful time and more money for the music school we are building in Armenia.”

“The ad-hoc benefit WhoCares band,” continues Gillan, “was a band put together by Tony Iommi and myself on a flight home from Yerevan, where we’d been deeply humbled by the honor and expectation bestowed upon us. Well that’s it really, in a nutshell, so to speak, what more can I say? It’s all there in the music.”

The release of this very special 2 CD set is a must for all Deep Purple fans and fans of hard rock.